by Ray Garton
It got windier and colder as they walked past the door to the stairs that led down to the basement. Fara closed her eyes as they passed that door, and in the darkness of her mind, she saw the Tank, spattered and smeared with blood after a test, and snapped her eyes open.
The wind was deceptive. It made all kinds of sounds, some of which strongly resembled footsteps coming toward them, or coming up behind them. The sounds made Fara glance repeatedly over her shoulder.
They came to the main first floor corridor, usually broad and well lit at this end, and turned right. Now it was just a wall of darkness beyond the beam of her flashlight, and a rush of wind slammed into them hard enough to make both take a steadying step backwards. Paper and books and leaves and chips of plaster and wallpaper and other debris skittered over the floor, rushing toward them like a horde of misshapen spiders, and swept by their feet and into the darkness behind them.
There were small orbs of light in the darkness up ahead, floating and bobbing in the dark. There was movement, too, and voices garbled by the wind. The orbs of light were headlamps.
“Looks like the cafeteria,” Emilio said.
Fara nodded and said, “That tree stood right beside the cafeteria.” She was surprised he heard her because her voice was so weak and shaky.
She was relieved the tree had fallen on the cafeteria because no one would have been in there. In that case, it was doubtful that anyone was hurt.
Up ahead, men were shouting at each other.
“Ollie, I’m tellin’ ya, the best thing is just to get out! Right now! You guys shouldn’t even be standin’ in there now, I’m tellin’ ya. I was a carpenter back in the day, y’know, I know what I’m talkin’ about, goddammit!”
There was shouting from inside the cafeteria.
“We’ll just post guards out here! Nobody’s gettin’ out through this mess, Ollie. And if they try, it’ll probably fall on ’em!”
There was an urgency in the man’s voice that made Fara slow her pace as they neared him. They could see the open door of the cafeteria now and two men standing outside. There was more yelling from beyond the open door.
The sound of a gunshot behind them cut through the howling wind. Fara and Emilio spun around.
A man’s voice cried out in inarticulate fear and the gun fired again. There was another sound. Another voice down there in the dark. Low, speaking rapidly. Angrily.
“The hell’s goin’ on?” said a man behind them—the man who had been shouting through the cafeteria door.
Emilio said, “Gunshots and—”
The man screamed down there in the dark and the fear was replaced by pain.
There was more shouting inside the stormy cafeteria and the man standing behind them shouted, “Go help him, for Christ’s sake!” Then he went back to the cafeteria’s open doorway.
Somehow, Fara could not imagine herself going down that corridor, into that inky blackness with her tiny flashlight and revolver, and helping the man who was still screaming in pain. The Fara McManus who had not come to Springmeier, who had not applied for the job at Dr. Urbanski’s urging, who had done something else with her life and had not been tainted by all of this—that Fara McManus would run into the dark without thinking, that was the kind of person she was. But she wasn’t that woman anymore. She felt beaten down, dominated, cowed, and she couldn’t move.
“Stay right here,” Emilio said. “Right here with these guys.”
“Take my light!”
“Keep it,” he said. “They won’t see me coming. Stay here!” As he jogged away, he reached back and took the gun from under his shirt.
Fara did not like the idea of Emilio leaving her. If he didn’t come back—
“No, no!” the man behind her shouted into the cafeteria doorway. “I’m tellin’ ya, that section of the ceiling’s gonna come down any minute, and when it does, it’s gonna bring that—oh, fuck! Get out! Get the fuck outta there!”
Suddenly, there was a big arm around Fara’s waist and she was being shoved forward in the corridor and men were running past them from behind, shouting in panic. She couldn’t breathe for a moment as her feet scrambled to keep up with the man who was pushing her, and at times dragging her, away from the cafeteria. She still clutched the flashlight in her left hand and the .38 in her right.
A growing roar came from the cafeteria, a sound made up of cracking wood and shattering glass and loud crashing. But it got even louder and spilled out into the corridor with a sound that grew so loud, Fara was certain the ceiling was coming down on them.
And then the loud noise was gone and she was surrounded by dust that clouded her flashlight beam and made her cough. It swirled in the beams of four headlamps.
“Who’s here?” Ollie said. “Sound off!”
Three voices called out three names between coughs.
“That’s it?” Ollie growled. “Where’s Jacobi? Where’s Washington?”
Everyone turned around. The headlamps were bright, but they could not cut through heavy dust. They all stood there for a moment as it slowly dissipated.
The corridor ended quite abruptly now, at about the spot where the doorway of the cafeteria had stood open only a minute ago. The wall that ran the length of the cafeteria had collapsed and had brought down part of the second floor with it. Half of the corridor’s ceiling had collapsed. The half that had not collapsed went along for only a short distance before it, too, had fallen in.
Ollie was angry about missing two of his men and paced back and forth shouting obscenities at himself, and one of the men asked how old the building was, anyway, and as they talked and even argued, Fara tuned them out and turned her back on them. She looked in the other direction down the eldritch corridor and listened for something that would tell her Emilio was safe. The beam of her miniature flashlight seemed feeble against that wall of onyx. She heard . . . something.
At first, she thought it was something being blown over the floor by the wind and rattling against the tiles. But it was something else. Not an object, but a . . . voice.
“—and I’ve said it before . . . probably have to say it again . . . nothing’s fair in this life, but goddammit—”
Fara took a few steps forward, away from the men talking behind her, toward the ebony murk from which she heard the voice. It was growing louder. Rapidly becoming clearer. And through the shifting dust that clouded the darkness, she saw a speck of light getting brighter. Getting closer.
“—given my whole fucking life and what do I get in return? Has anyone even fucking noticed?”
A man’s voice, but not too loud. His words were almost blown away by the wind. He was getting closer. Fara assumed he was one of Ollie’s because he had a headlamp.
“I’ve had it up to here and I’m not taking this shit anymore, do you fucking hear me, I’m just not gonna take it, goddammit!”
Fara bent her right elbow and aimed the gun without raising her arm from her side. The jittery headlamp grew brighter. Closer.
“I’m fucking done and anybody who doesn’t like it can just fuck off, understand me? Just fuck off! Shit! Shitfuck! Fuckshit!”
A figure oozed out of the ebony fog. Tall and slender and bald with silver stubble on his scalp, and so pale, with the tattered, bloody remains of a hospital gown dangling from his mostly naked body. Blood was glossy around his mouth, on his chin, and down his chest, shoulders hunched as he continued forward in a fast, steady walk, angrily chattering, arms close to his sides, elbows bent, one fist clenched around a blood-streaked knife and the other around—
As soon as she saw the gun, Fara squeezed her .38 and it fired.
The man stumbled to a stop and bent forward a moment, crying out. He looked down at himself and saw the crimson bloom in the right side of his abdomen. Then he stood up straight and glared at Fara with wide, gleaming eyes.
“You think just because you shoot me I’m gonna roll over?” he said as he kept coming. “Huh? Like a killer whale at Marine World? Huh? What the fuck yo
u think I am, some kinda fucking communist?” He lifted his gun and fired.
Fara squeezed the .38 again, and kept squeezing.
The pale, ghostly figure went down hard, and a moment later, she realized she was still firing an empty gun.
And she had killed someone.
Heavy, clopping footsteps ran toward her out of the dark. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?” Emilio ran around the body on the floor and came to her.
Her arms and hands shook and she panted like a runner. She turned the trembling flashlight on herself and looked for wounds. “Did he shoot me?” she whispered. “Am I shot?”
“I think you’re fine,” Emilio said. He grabbed her wrist and took the gun from her, but she tugged it away from him and stared at it. Frowned at it.
“I think I killed him,” she whispered. She took a step to the left and looked beyond Emilio at the still body on the floor. “Jesus Christ, I . . . I killed a man.”
“You had to. You had no choice. You’re shaking pretty bad, are you gonna be okay?”
“I . . . I . . . don’t know.”
He put an arm around her shoulders, then looked behind her, pointed down the corridor, and said, “Hey, Ollie. One of your guys is down there and he’s hurt. He was attacked by”—he pointed to the body on the floor—“that guy. He was bitten.”
“Bitten?” Ollie said. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, he was pretty shook up, too. He’s just sitting down there, leaning against the wall. Said he was afraid if he stood, he’d pass out. He said he’d be fine if he just sat there for a while, but I don’t know.”
By now, the men Ollie had summoned were gathering at the corridor intersection. He stepped in front of Fara, leaned close, and spoke quietly. “I want straight answers from you. You said it could be contracted from a carrier’s blood. What about a bite?”
“Yes, that would transmit the virus.”
“How do we know we’ve got it? What are the symptoms?”
“The initial symptoms are flulike,” she said. “Achiness, chills, headache, maybe some nausea. A while after that will come the rage. Violent, furious anger for no reason. When I say violent, I mean it. The time varies from person to person. Anywhere from ten to thirty minutes.”
“And after that?”
Answering questions was calming her. “We’re not sure, but we’re going to find out. Apparently, Dr. Corcoran was keeping surviving test subjects—”
“Surviving?”
“Most of our tests involve putting newly infected test subjects together two at a time in an observation chamber. We watch as the symptoms progress, record how long it takes them to become violent, the levels of violence, that sort of thing.”
Fara stopped talking for a moment and wondered if she was going to get punched again. The anger in Ollie’s eyes as they peered out of his ski mask was hotter than lava and it was aimed directly into her eyes. But he made no move and said nothing. He simply glared pure hate at her.
“One of the two usually kills the other,” she continued, “although on two occasions, even the survivors died of their injuries. It seems Dr. Corcoran has been putting the survivors in the subbasement. Unless your men have let them loose, in which case they could show up anytime, couldn’t they?”
“You said there’s no antidote. What are my options if my people get this thing?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”
“If my men start showing symptoms, what can I do?”
“With the goal being to prevent it from spreading further?”
“Yes, of course.”
There was only one answer to that question, but she could not say it out loud. Not directly. “What are you doing with the test—with the homeless people, Ollie?”
He nodded slowly, grimly. “If that guy down the hall has been bitten, then he’s bleeding. And if he’s got this virus and somebody gets his blood on his hands—well, you know how this works, you invented the goddamned thing. Along with being as careful as we can about getting blood on our skin—or any other bodily fluids, for that matter—do you have any suggestions?”
She turned to Emilio. “Can you get some gloves out of one of the closets?”
“Sure,” Emilio said.
“Bring a whole case.”
He turned and hurried down the side corridor as if going back to Fara’s office, but he stopped and opened a storage closet and went inside.
Ollie stepped away from Fara and returned his attention to his men, but she watched him and listened.
As he looked around, Ollie said, “Okay, where’s my brain? Delgado?”
“Here,” said a small, young-sounding man as he hurried out of nowhere to Ollie’s side.
“Aside from the guys in the cafeteria, who are we missing so far?”
“Nobody’s seen Bursell and Castillo. I mean, not since we got here.”
“Anybody know where they went?”
“They came in through the tunnel, and when the others came up, they stayed down there to look around. And nobody’s seen ’em since.”
“Jesus Christ. Bursell’s pretty easily distracted. Go down there and see if you can find them. Bring them back up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you don’t want to go alone, pick someone to take with you.”
“I don’t mind going alone.”
“Report back to me when you’re done. And stay the hell out of the subbasement.”
“Well, they were going to check that out, too.”
“Bursell and Castillo?”
“Yes, sir. Those were your orders.”
“Well, on second thought, they weren’t very good ones. If you can’t find them in the basement, come back up here and I’ll send a couple more guys with you. I might even go myself. If what I’ve been told is true, I want plenty of cameras down there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And listen to me, Delgado. If you find anyone locked up down there, do not let them out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fara thought he sounded like a boy, a teenager. When he hurried away, he moved with eagerness and youth.
Emilio returned carrying a large case of individually wrapped pairs of latex gloves. He put the cardboard box on the floor beside Fara and Ollie joined them as he tore through the tape and cardboard to open it.
“No one should deal with an open wound without a pair of these on,” Fara said. “The gloves aren’t a guarantee, but they’re a good safety precaution.”
“They’re already wearing gloves.”
“Then they should wear these under them.”
“I’ll make sure of it.” He took a package of gloves from the box, turned to his men, and held it up. “These are latex gloves. You are not to go near blood or an open wound without a pair of these on your hands. Listen very closely to this because your life depends on it. When dealing with the homeless pe—uh, the people we came here to—the, uh, test subjects, when dealing with the test subjects, do not, I repeat, do not get their blood on your skin. They are carrying a deadly virus. If their blood gets on your skin, you will contract the virus.”
He lowered his head a moment, cleared his throat, then continued.
“This isn’t a garden variety virus. It was manufactured by the fine folks from Vendon Labs to be used as a biological weapon. The test subjects were infected with the virus. We released the test subjects. Now we, uh . . . we don’t have any choice. We have to kill them. To be safe, I want everybody to put on a pair of these latex gloves under the gloves you’re wearing. Once you’ve done that, Rubens, I need you to go down that corridor there. I’m not sure who it is, but somebody was bitten and he’s wounded down there and needs some first aid.”
Rubens peered into the black cave that was the corridor Ollie had indicated and said, “He’s just bitten? Well . . . can’t he come here?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine, quit talking about me like I’m not here.” The voice came out of that dark cave, and it was followed shortly b
y one of Ollie’s masked men.
“Aguilar?” Ollie said.
“Yeah.”
“You were bitten?”
“On the arm.”
“Did it break the skin?”
“Break the—well, yeah. Why?” He stared at Ollie a moment, then said, “Why, Ollie? Should I be worried?”
“Uh . . . c’mon over here and let’s talk,” Ollie said, waving him over.
Emilio moved to Ollie’s side. “You want us to stick around, or should we go back to the office?”
“You’ve got guns, why don’t you stick around and help us? We could use all the help we can get.” He nodded toward Fara. “And she knows her way around this place, which would be a big help.”
“Okay. What kind of help do you need?”
Ollie laughed and shook his head as if it were a stupid question. “The hell do you think? We need help killing them.”
38
Jeremiah Delgado was happy to be doing something by himself. He was happy to be going down a dark stairwell to the dark basement of an abandoned mental hospital because it meant he wasn’t in a drunk tank, or an alley, or a gutter.
He was not a veteran like most of Ollie’s men. Delgado was nineteen and had been rescued by Ollie at a low point in his life. His mother had given him an ultimatum: Get out of the gang or don’t come home, and if he tried to come home while he was still gangbanging, she would shoot him. Then she changed the locks on the doors. He didn’t want to be in a gang anymore, but he was afraid to quit. He’d known guys who quit and got killed for it. His mother wouldn’t let him in the house and would start shooting at him if he showed up, he didn’t want to go back to the gang, and he had nowhere else to go. So he went to the streets and just blended in and disappeared. Ollie found him in a sweep of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district and brought him to Eureka. For that, Ollie had Delgado’s undying loyalty. He also had a valuable resource in Delgado, who Ollie said was the smartest, sharpest, most intelligent person he had brought to the compound. His sixth-grade teacher had told Delgado that he had something called an eidetic memory, and ever since Ollie learned that fact, he’d called Delgado his brain.